Willie D. Clark paced, chain-smoked and appeared jittery in the days after Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was killed, according to a childhood friend who testified against Clark on Thursday.

Vernone Edwards, a fellow Tre Tre Crips gang member, told a Denver jury that Clark said he shot Williams only because the NFL player pulled a gun on Clark following an argument outside the Shelter nightclub early New Year’s Day 2007.

“I told him he was lying,” Edwards said. “He kept saying, ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ I told him, ‘Ain’t no famous football player with a lot of famous people around is going to pull a gun like that.’ “

Clark, 26, is on trial on charges of killing Williams and wounding two others during the drive-by shooting and faces life in prison if convicted.

Edwards, 32, was the final witness called by the prosecution before it rested its case. The defense is expected to begin presenting a case to jurors today.

Edwards told jurors Clark carried a .40-caliber handgun at the end of 2006 and asked Edwards to get him a “twin gun” or a gun of the same caliber after the shooting. Edwards said Clark told him he dismantled the weapon used in the drive-by.

Williams was wounded in the neck by a .40-caliber bullet. Police recovered a .40-caliber barrel without a frame in a field near Green Valley Ranch, but the barrel did not have fingerprints on it.

Edwards confronted Clark and did his own investigation about the killing because he was concerned the high-profile homicide might affect his drug business, and Edwards urged Clark to turn himself in to take the heat off.

“He said, ‘I’m not going to do all day,’ ” Edwards said.

“All day” is slang for life in prison.

He said Clark talked about going on the run but was arrested soon after they spoke.

Edwards, also known as “Lil 30 ounce,” met Clark in 1993 when he was a teenager and Clark was a boy. The two grew up in the same eastside Denver neighborhood and spent time together almost daily up until the New Year’s Day shooting.

Clark’s defense team accused Edwards of lying and said he gave up Clark as the shooter because he saw a chance to benefit on his federal drug case.

Edwards is in the custody of U.S. marshals awaiting sentencing on a charge of conspiracy to distribute crack-cocaine and may get a reduction in his sentence if state and federal prosecutors believe he testified truthfully in the Williams case.

Under the federal plea agreement, Edwards could get 10 to 20 years in prison rather than the 30 years to life sentence he was facing.

Clark’s attorney, Abraham Hutt, questioned Edwards about whether he was a feared person in the neighborhood, accusing him of being an armed security guard of a crack house who acted as a bodyguard for fellow drug dealers.

Edwards told Hutt he was involved in drug dealing but denied he was an armed guard or that he was intimidating people.

Edwards also contradicted the testimony of Daniel “Ponytail” Harris, who claimed he was not involved in any fight outside the Shelter with Clark.

“He said it looked like someone was going to swing on his sister or Little Willie and he got into the middle of it,” Edwards recalled of his conversation with Harris.

Also on Thursday, Judge Christina M. Habas sent a third reluctant witness to jail after he refused to testify.

The man initially asked for a guarantee that the media would not use his name, and when told that the media would agree only to use his first name, he still refused to testify and went to jail. He will remain in jail at least until the end of the trial and could be there as long as six months.

Habas also asked Clark whether he made a decision about whether he plans to testify in his own defense.

Clark prosecutors rest case

There were 7½ days of testimony in the state’s case. But, as expected, only one witness, Daniel “Ponytail” Harris, claims to have seen the shooting and identified Willie Clark as the man firing the gun.

There is plenty of room for doubt around Harris’ story. Though physical evidence is clear that two guns were fired at Darrent Williams’ limousine, Harris testified that only Clark fired a weapon from a Chevrolet Tahoe as it pulled alongside the limo. And Harris is testifying under a deal that could knock a life sentence for drug trafficking down to five years, giving the defense lots of ammunition to insinuate he was lying to save himself.

The bulk of the state’s other witnesses who testified to having conversations with Clark about the Williams shooting also received immunity from prosecution and/or plea agreements on other charges in exchange for their testimony. Defense attorneys made sure jurors were well- aware of those deals in each case.

Prosecutors can be expected to remind jurors during closing arguments about Clark’s gang ties, and how difficult it would be to penetrate a code of silence and fear among gangsters without offering incentives to witnesses.

As evidence of that fear, prosecutors are likely to point out that three witnesses, including two who are believed to have been in the Tahoe on the night of the shooting, have chosen to go to jail rather than tell jurors what they know.

One witness testified that Clark was looking for a gun outside the Shelter nightclub, where the dispute began between several Denver Broncos and Clark. Another put Clark behind the wheel of the Tahoe that night.

Other witnesses — gang affiliates and inmates who talked to Clark while in jail — told fairly consistent stories about how Clark said the shooting happened.

In most versions, Clark acknowledged firing out of a car at the limousine. In one, told to a childhood friend, he claimed one of the Broncos pointed a gun at him first. There is no evidence that happened.

As for physical evidence, there is little. The Tahoe was recovered but had been burned inside. Clark’s fingerprints were not in it. The barrel of a handgun used in the shooting was found in a field. It too contained no fingerprints.

A letter in which it appears Clark admits the shooting was found in jail, but the inmate who discovered it is no longer in custody and cannot be found, and the state did not offer testimony from a handwriting expert to prove Clark wrote it. The jury will be allowed to consider it anyway, with instruction from the judge to weigh it carefully among other evidence.

Video from surveillance cameras inside and outside the Shelter nightclub make clear that Clark was at the club. But they also show that Harris was an aggressor outside the club, pushing his way up the street during a melee and knocking a woman down.

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